04 Mar

Yahoo Mail Makes Friends with Facebook

Posted by Jennifer Van Grove, under Business, Facebook, Social Media, Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, facebook connect, news

In December, Yahoo revealed a new strategy: lots and lots of Facebook. Today the company announced that it’s gradually rolling out the first feature to come from the partnership — Facebook Connect integration with Yahoo Mail.

The new feature means that Yahoo Mail users can now connect their Facebook accounts and integrate their Facebook friends’ e-mail addresses into their Yahoo Contacts list. Users can visit the Import Contacts page to be guided through he Facebook friend import process.

Of course, this is just the beginning of the full Facebook Connect feature bonanza on Yahoo. You can expect functionality to be integrated into News, Sports, Finance and even Flickr in the months ahead.

Given that Facebook is now 400 million members strong, we have to believe that there’s a significant shared user base between Facebook and Yahoo. In a perfect world, Yahoo will see those users stay on Yahoo properties and use the Facebook contact and sharing functionality to push Yahoo content out to the world’s largest social network and generate more traffic in return.

[img credit: superfluity]

Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, news

Tags: facebook connect, social media, Yahoo Mail

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03 Mar

RootMusic’s BandPage Makes Better Facebook Fan Pages for Bands

Posted by Samuel Axon, under Channels, Facebook, Social Media, bandpages, bizspark, facebook connect, mashable, music, news, rootmusic, social networking, spark-of-genius, startups

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: RootMusic

Quick Pitch: RootMusic is all about making musicians’ professional lives better, be it through building software or building community.

Genius Idea: RootMusic’s debut product is called BandPage, and it makes MySpace-like band page features possible inside a Facebook fan page.

At present, Facebook fan pages are laid out in such a way that you can’t share your music with your fans while letting them continue to browse for information. You can deploy a music player tab, but as soon as your fans click on the Photos tab to see pictures of your band, the music stops.

RootMusic’s BandPage adds its own interface for displaying band info, tour dates and photos without putting a stop to the music (a feature that puts the program ahead of MySpace, which only allows one to listen to music while on the playlist page). You can share the photos that are already present on your fan page without uploading new ones.

At the bottom of the band page, your fans can post to your page’s wall or look at a stream of tweets related to your band. At the top, they can play your songs, read your bio and access your contact information. In the middle, there’s a list of your upcoming live shows along with their locations and door charges.

BandPage is free, and login is handled by Facebook Connect, so you don’t have to create a new account with RootMusic to make all this happen. For some examples of BandPage in action, check out the fan pages for OONA, Con Brio and Dear Wolfgang.

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Reviews: Facebook, MySpace, PHP

Tags: bandpages, bizspark, facebook, facebook connect, music, rootmusic, spark-of-genius, startups

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07 Sep

Blogged Connects With Facebook, Adds Comments And Likes To Posts

Posted by Matt Holliday, under Facebook, Marketing, blogged, facebook connect, gladys kong

Blogged is making reading and commenting on your favorite blogs more of a social experience, with some new changes that include Facebook integration for sharing comments and posts in your news feed. There’s also the ability to “like” blog posts, much like the same feature in Facebook for status updates or feed entries.

Blogges Screencap

The new Blogged interface looks very similar to a Facebook news feed, with profile photos accompanying likes and comments just below the blog previews. The new layout gives the site more of a community feel, as opposed to the previous site which was more of a traditional news site. According to Blogged co-founder Gladys Kong, this was one of the main goals of the new features.

“Traditional news media has been one-directional. and while blogs elicit reader comments, they’re typically scattered across the web for a fragmented experience. With Blogged, we’re pulling together all these stories and their insightful discussions into a single social hub.”

Another included feature is a widget for adding the new comments and likes on Blogged back to your own personal blog. This can help bloggers better track who’s commenting or liking their posts, as well as posts for blogs with similar content or interests. This can be especially beneficial to businesses when looking for industry trends and how content is being received in key demographics.

blogged widget

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